and the rest of the sects driven by their own whims went so far as to claim that the Speech of the Creator—exalted is He, far above the chatter of the deviant—is something newly produced, brought into existence after non-existence.

Some of them even refused to call it “created,” while at the same time firmly asserting its temporality (1). They argued that the word “created” (2) carries the suggestion of fabrication, for fabricated speech (3), they said, is what a speaker invents without any prior basis.

Most of the Muʿtazilah nonetheless applied the term “created” to the Speech of Allah.

The Karrāmiyyah, on the other hand, maintained that Speech itself is eternal, whereas “statement” is temporal yet, in their terminology, not “produced.” They contended that the Qur’an is the statement of Allah, not His Speech; that the Speech of Allah—magnified is He—is nothing but the power (4) to speak; and that His statement is temporal and subsists in His very Essence—exalted is He above the falsehood of the nullifiers. Yet, He is not, in their view, a speaker by virtue of the statement that subsists in Him (5); rather, He is (6) a speaker by virtue of sheer “speakerhood” (7). Everything whose existence begins while remaining within the Lord (8) is, they claim, temporal by His power yet not “produced,” whereas every produced thing (9) that exists apart from the Essence is brought into being by His command, “Be!”, not by the power. This stream of delirious rambling is too lengthy for the present creed to examine in detail.